{"id":315201,"date":"2026-02-24T19:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T19:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315201\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T19:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T19:16:08","slug":"at-breaking-point-galway-school-reacts-to-govt-u-turn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/315201\/","title":{"rendered":"‘At breaking point’, Galway school reacts to Govt U-turn"},"content":{"rendered":"

“We are stretched almost to breaking point” – that was the message from one Co Galway school following the U-turn by the Department of Education over proposals to reduce Special Needs Assistants in almost 200 schools.<\/p>\n

St Joseph’s National School in Kinvara applied for additional SNA supports last October.<\/p>\n

The 330 pupil school was taking part in the review process by the National Council for Special Education.<\/p>\n

Dominic Gallagher, principal of the school, told RT\u00c9’s News at One: “We were told we would have our decision within one month. But we waited until the end of January to get the outcome.<\/p>\n

“An email arrived at 6.05pm in the evening telling us we were going to lose two SNAs.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Can you imagine the impact of this? We’re doing our very, very best. But we’ve stretched our resources to the limit and almost to breaking point.”<\/p>\n

The announcement last night that there will be no reductions of SNAs in the short term still leaves a number of questions yet to be answered, according to Mr Gallagher.<\/p>\n

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“We have a child who will need an SNA in September, but we were told by our local Special Education Needs Organiser that we can only apply for this support in October.<\/p>\n

“So where does that leave the teacher? And more importantly the pupil and the parent of the child are left in complete limbo and it is so wrong and so unfair,” he said.<\/p>\n

Caitr\u00edona Rabbit is a teacher in the school\u2019s autism class.<\/p>\n

“Initially when I saw the news, I thought fantastic.<\/p>\n

\"
\nCaitr\u00edona Rabbit said she initially thought the news was ‘fantastic’<\/p>\n

“But will we be back here again next year if they don’t review these changes?<\/p>\n

“We’re unpausing the pause. We’re reviewing the review and on and on it goes.<\/p>\n

“School communities and parents are losing a bit of the little trust that they had when it comes to SNA and SNA allocations,” she said.<\/p>\n

Darren Melia works as an SNA at St Joseph’s and is also the parent of a daughter who has special needs.<\/p>\n

“It’s been tough the last few months now, really wondering what’s going to happen. You know, are you going to be redeployed? Where would you be redeployed to?<\/p>\n

\"Darren
\nSNA, Darren Melia said the last few months have been ‘tough’<\/p>\n

“You’d hate to leave the school you’re in because you get such an attachment to the kids that you’re working with.<\/p>\n

“And as a parent of a child with special needs, I can understand very much how parents must feel.<\/p>\n

“There is still a lot of uncertainty,” he said.<\/p>\n

Read more: Govt ‘not kicking the can down the road’ with SNA funding – minister<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“We are stretched almost to breaking point” – that was the message from one Co Galway school following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-315201","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}